What Problems Can Occur From a Router Overheating?

Routers permit households, schools and businesses to operate computers without anchors to electrical wires and outlets. These helpful gadgets have a downside in that they can overheat, no matter the brand or age. Many facilities leave their computers on for 24 hours, and routers, in particular, can wear out in time; the most apparent symptom is overheating. More overheating occurs in summer than in winter, and traffic from heavy gaming or loading large applications cause routers to run hot.

Dropped Internet connections are the most common symptom of an overheated router. Random dropping of connections,without warning plague hot routers. Internet connections cease for varying amounts of time, ranging from from seconds to minutes or sometimes hours. Computer operators' greatest router frustration centers on not knowing when the Internet connection will return.

When routers overheat, sometimes computer operations slow to a crawl or operations freeze. Even in households or facilities with high-speed broadband or other lightning-fast fiber optics, little to nothing happens on the computer screen when the router overheats. Snail-like connection speed may equal, in users' frustration, no connection at all.

Flickering lights, flashing lights or no router light signal an overheated router. Sometimes the router lights blink at dizzying speed. At other times, the red diagnostic light remains on while connection lights go black.

Complete hardware failure, of not only the router but the computer's motherboard, occurs in the worst-case scenario from a scorching router. Some computer owners confess to burns from touching a super-hot router; an overheating router can even start a fire.